With the Human Calculator Kid adding 100 4-digit numbers in just over 30 seconds and Google’s new quantum computer chip processing otherwise impossible problems at speeds possibly indicative of a multiverse, you might want to stop for a moment to consider just how fast your brain works.

And thanks to researchers at Caltech, this question has a firm answer – and one that might make you wish you’d never questioned it.

That’s because, according to research recently published in the journal Neuron has proven that our brains work slower than our fragile egos might want to imagine.

According to the paper, the human thought process happens at a rate of 10 bits per second.

This speed seems puny when compared to the billion bits per second with which our senses decode the environment around us, giving researchers plenty to think about.

To slowly think about, that is.

In order to quantify the speed of human thought, Caltech’s Jieyu Zheng compared it to the speed of computing. By testing the rate at which humans do things like read and write, solve Rubik’s Cubes and play video games, the research team were able to calculate just how fast a human brain’s thought processes operate.

And, as Caltech’s Markus Meister explained in a statement, this number was staggering to the researchers:

“This is an extremely low number. Every moment, we are extracting just 10 bits from the trillion that our senses are taking in and using those 10 to perceive the world around us and make decisions. This raises a paradox: What is the brain doing to filter all of this information?”

This paradox that Meister highlights is the so-called ‘speed limit’ in the brain, which seemingly stops the brain’s cerebral cortex from thinking at a much faster rate – one at which the authors indicate is more than possible, thanks to the powerful neurons populating the brain.

However, the researchers have a theory. Tt is thanks to evolution, and the lifestyle that humans have carved on our planet over hundreds of thousands of years, that they believe limits our processing speed in such a way:

“Our ancestors have chosen an ecological niche where the world is slow enough to make survival possible. In fact, the 10 bits per second are needed only in worst-case situations, and most of the time our environment changes at a much more leisurely pace.”

As a result of this pace, the researchers suggest, our brain has no need to process at an even faster speed than 10 bits per second. Nor does our evolution deem any need to think about more than one thing at a time.

Why? Well in the most dangerous situations – being chased by a bear for example – this one-track mind was helpful. All we really needed in this instance was to get away.

And now, well we can just be grateful that thanks to our ancestors even the most anxious among us are allowed at least some chill time, rather than processing thousands of pieces of information at once like the computers we rely on for such tasks.

The former seems to be an intrinsic part of being human, after all.

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